BRKG Brand new FIU pedestrian walkway in Miami Florida has collapsed on cars

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Diversity makes us stronger... Maybe not....

The all-women engineering team that designed the ill-fated pedestrian foot bridge at Miami’s Florida International University were highly touted for their advances in a field that is typically dominated by men.

But critics are pointing the finger of blame at the female engineers for design flaws that may have brought the bridge down.

Investigators are still on the scene of last week’s bridge collapse that killed 6 people and injured 9 on the FIU campus in Southwest Miami.

FIU foot bridge

The investigation is focusing on the work done by a team of all-women engineers who were employed by one of the construction firms that designed and built the bridge.

Munilla Construction Management (MCM), the South Miami-based firm that designed the FIU foot bridge, has been sued multiple times for unsafe practices in the past.

In early March MCM was sued by a construction worker who was severely injured when MCM’s “makeshift bridge” at Miami’s International Airport collapsed.

MCM is a Cuban-American, family-owned Miami company founded in 1983 that employs more than 1,000 people in several states. The company is a federal military contractor for the U.S. Army and Navy.

MCM was awarded the $14.2 million minority contract to design and build the cable-stayed bridge. The company is well-connected in Miami politics and it promotes inclusion and diversity in the workforce.

According to Politico.com, Munilla Construction is “about as politically connected as they get in Florida.”

The lead engineer on the foot bridge project is a female, Leonor Flores, who is a graduate of FIU.

MCM builder

Flores led a team of all-women engineers and designers who oversaw the crews that built the prefabricated “instant bridge” by the side of the road using FIU’s own accelerated construction techniques.

MCM partnered with the FIGG Bridge Group, a Tallahassee-Based engineering firm, to move the massive foot bridge into place over 8th Street in just 7 hours on Saturday, March 10.

MCM builder

MCM hailed Flores and her all-women design team in celebratory social media posts on Twitter.com in the hours before the deadly collapse.

But critics say simple mathematics would have prevented the disaster in Miami.

Studies all over the world have shown that boys and men are twice as good at math as girls and women. The gender disparity in mathematics scores explains why there are far fewer women engineers than men in the world.

FIU foot bridge

The FIU foot bridge was designed to be supported from above by a system of thick steel cables (see illustration) and a reinforced concrete center support column. But the cables and the center column had not been installed before the 950 ton, 174-foot bridge was moved into place over 8th street on Saturday.

Sen. Marco Rubio, who lives a few miles from FIU, rushed to the scene of the collapse and shared insider information that the cables were “being tightened” before the bridge collapsed.

It isn’t clear if Rubio was referring to the missing cables that were not installed on the bridge.

After the collapse, MCM stated the cables were not scheduled to be installed on the bridge until 2019. The company did not explain what temporary supports were being used.

MCM Construction deleted their @WeAreMCM Twitter account following the disaster. But the Twitter account is still cached on Google.com.

MCM was awarded the $14.2 million minority contract to design and build the cable-stayed bridge. The company is well-connected in Miami politics and it promotes inclusion and diversity in the workforce.

This knowledge is the king of education, the most secret of all secrets. It is the purest knowledge, and because it gives direct perception of the self by realization, it is the perfection of religion. It is everlasting, and it is joyfully performed.

Authorities on Sunday released the names of the final victims from a deadly Miami, Florida bridge collapse. Five bodies were pulled from crushed cars and one man died at the hospital, bringing the total number of victims up to six. Authorities believe they have recovered all the bodies.

Police confirmed the deaths of Ronaldo Fraga Hernandez, Oswald Gonzalez and Alberto Arias. Navaro Brown, 37, who died at the hospital, was employed by a structural technology company. Brandon Brownfield was believed to be inside one of the other cars that was removed Saturday night. And 18-year-old Alexa Duran, a student at the university, was recovered from one of the vehicles Saturday night.

The families of the dead and the injured asked for privacy as they try to make sense of their sudden, inexplicable loss.

"It's a pretty magical thing to find your soul mate in this world," Brandon Brownfield's wife, Chelsea, wrote on Facebook Sunday. "Like pieces to a jigsaw puzzle, our crazy curvy edges matched and we fit together like no one else could."

The Brownfields had three young daughters, and the family moved to Florida several years ago for his job at Maxim Crane Works, according to a fundraising page a friend started for the family that had raised more than $50,000 in a few days. He was driving home from work when the bridge collapsed.

"I now have to find the words and the answers to tell my girls that their Daddy is not coming home," his wife wrote on Facebook.

Gonzalez and Arias together owned a party rental and decoration business. Their bodies were found Saturday inside their white Chevy truck as rescuers for days painstakingly dug through the wreckage of the fallen pedestrian bridge at Florida International University. Hope for a miracle rescue faded as the names of the six dead became known, and those left living grappled with the senselessness, the suddenness of it.

Dania Garlobo was driving to work at a nail salon when the green light changed to yellow and a man in a white Mercedes tried to make it through the light, but stomped on the brakes just as the bridge fell in front of him.

"He was almost caught underneath. I couldn't believe it," Garlobo said. She watched the bridge smash into the street below in what seemed like an instant.

"How is it that a strong bridge falls down like a piece of board?

Llera had sped to the scene and arrived within minutes. In the mayhem, he found a man lying unconscious on the street and started performing CPR. He could barely feel a pulse, but someone with the medical staff from the university came by and said, "you are keeping him alive. Keep going." And so he did, and the man was alive when they rushed him away.

Llera checked in at the hospital but could get no information. He thought the man had lived. He'd hoped they could shake hands one day.

But on Sunday morning, he studied a picture on the news of a young man in a crisp red shirt.

He has been identified by police as Brown, a 37-year-old employee with Structural Technologies VSL, listed among those killed. He had died at the hospital.

Duran was majoring in political science and looking forward to law school one day. Richie Humble, a 19-year-old student, had not been feeling well earlier in the week. On Thursday, a friend, Duran, the nicest person he said he ever knew, gave him a ride to his doctor's office to pick up some medication. They stopped at a red light, under the bridge.

"I heard a creak, a long creak," Humble told The Associated Press in a phone interview. "I looked up, and in an instant, the bridge was collapsing on us completely. It was too quick to do anything about it."

Once he realized he was alive, he also realized that he couldn't get to his friend. As he called out for her, getting no response, a group of men outside the car started yelling at him to try crawling out of the car. They pried open the door to free him.

He sat on a curb as rescue workers checked out the cuts on his leg and slight facture in a vertebrae. He remembers asking, "What do I do?"

"Everyone has to pick up the pieces," he said the rescuer responded. "Life doesn't stop."

Investigators are still trying to figure out what caused the bridge to crumble. Cracking had been reported in the concrete span in the days before and crews were performing what's called "post-tensioning force" on the bridge when it flatted onto the busy highway below.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday and once again said work on the walkway could have triggered Thursday's collapse.

"There's these rods that go inside, they are like cables and they were being tightened," Rubio said. "They call it post tension application. And it is during that work that the bridge collapsed on the north end."

He explains what I didn't know--that the vertical column and cables were just a "dummy" suspension bridge "look"---NOT the support system for the bridge.

The ONLY support system for the bridge was the SINGLE LINE of "trusses" (the V-shape diagonal concrete columns, that have cables INSIDE). There is only ONE of each of those trusses---if the cable in ANY ONE of them fails (snaps) the bridge is going down.

They were apparently tightening the cable on the first truss on the left (where the crane was, but the crane was NOT attached to the bridge at the time of the fall) and that was one toothpick too many on the camel's back---the cable snapped, and down she went.

No backup--no redundancy of support--only ONE LINE of concrete trusses (and CONCRETE ONLY at that--NOT STEEL as is the more common way to design such a bridge) to hold up the bridge---if one fails---bye bye....

Very informative analysis....

Be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled…Let no man deceive you by any means…..

they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved….for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie….

Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

This guy most likely has the main cause of failure figured out. He really backs up what he is saying, and he provides evidence.
He even has a set of bridge construction/ installation drawings. Unfortunately there is a little bad language.

R/T 16:12

Skipped over the bad language...was FASCINATED by his reproducing, in his test, what probably happened, then showing the exact same layout on the bridge of the tensioning rods as in his 'experiment' when he forced them to fail.

The comments on this page are VERY enlightening, as it's obviously engineers discussing what happened:

I ran a test to see why the post tension rod was sticking out of the rubble. There was a problem with cracking on the pylon side of the bridge. As my homebrew experiment proves the rod must have failed during tensioning just before the bridge collapsed. Engineering Forum http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cf...
Reddit.com/r/engineering
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richmanricho
Pinned by AvE
richmanricho
2 days ago
So (from a completely non engenerding POV) did someone say "gnnnnnnnahh-click" after engaging safety squints. Possibly followed by "she'll be right might" ?﻿
713
Paul Phillips
Paul Phillips
1 hour ago
You referenced the collapse of the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Bridge in Vancouver B.C. in your presentation above was due to falsework failure. My father knew the first engineer who designed the falsework support for the bridge construction. The base was originally designed using 12X12s laid tight, in four layers to support the upper falsework. The powers in charge considered the design too conservative and used too much timber. The engineer was let go from the project and another engineer was installed to finish the project. The second engineer's design used four layers of 12X12s on 24 inch centers to save materials costs, against the strong objections of the first engineer. After the bridge collapse, my dad found out that the first engineer encountered his replacement in a bar shortly thereafter and beat the living crap out of him. Apparently no charges were laid as a result of the altercation. Thought you'd like to know some background on a bit of B.C. engineering history. Paul﻿
13
Jeff Irwin
Jeff Irwin
1 day ago
This is a first of a kind for the ABC method: Accelerated Bridge Collapse.﻿
89
Johnny B
Johnny B
1 day ago
Looks like you guys may have nailed it.https://www.ajc.com/news/cables-tigh...bdmlO/﻿
54
Johnny B
Johnny B
1 day ago
LOL. The New York Times says "Workers were adjusting cables that ran inside the beam."﻿
20
Johnny B
Johnny B
1 day ago (edited)
So the mainstream media is getting closer to what AvE said a couple of days ago, they still haven't gotten it quite right yet methinks.
From the Miami Herald:
"While the cracking dominated media coverage on Saturday, experts appeared less concerned over that than with other factors, including the tensioning work going on at the bridge’s north end. Cracking in new concrete is not uncommon and not necessarily a sign of failure, they say.

Tightening of steel cables, or tendons, that run through concrete structural elements is a delicate operation, and over-tightening can cause concrete pieces to twist and break apart, experts say."﻿
14
Shylock Hymie Shekelstein
Shylock Hymie Shekelstein
20 hours ago (edited)
Wow. "Cracking in new concrete is not uncommon and not necessarily a sign of failure " Well if that statement doesn't take the cake.﻿
Gordon Richardson
Gordon Richardson
17 hours ago
Concrete always has superficial cracks, some bigger than others. It is a composite material, and has rebar to hold it together (the tensioners are not the only support).﻿
3
Rata 4U
Rata 4U
5 hours ago
Johnny B

Mainstream vs what? Is there another kind?﻿
Gordon Richardson
Gordon Richardson
5 hours ago
There are specialised engineering journals that would cover this kind of story. They would take months to prepare and publish an article.﻿
2
Johnny B
Johnny B
5 hours ago
The people who were close to this project knew immediately it was because of one or maybe two things and said oh ****.﻿
D rB
D rB
5 hours ago
Exactly. It may be months or years before they pin down exactly what happened.﻿
D rB
D rB
4 hours ago
Have any concrete bridges near you? Or even ones with the concrete parapet walls along the side (barrier, so you don't drive off the edge). Walk out on one and look at the parapet or roadway up close. You will see thousands of spiderwebbing and microcracks. The bridge is constantly flexing, especially on a roadway bridge with traffic imparting massive live moment force every time it crosses onto the bridge from the approach slab. These are superficial cracks and mean little to the concrete's compressive strength. And on the parapets, that are non-load bearing, it means nothing. If the steel cables inside the concrete beams underneath the bridge fail...you lose all tensile strength and the bridge is in trouble.﻿
Predawn Precipitation
Predawn Precipitation
1 hour ago
alternative media. This youtube channel is a form of media.﻿
1
Paulo Roberto
Paulo Roberto
46 minutes ago
Yes, and concrete being a plastic material , we even calculate the size of possible cracks. It's in the codes.﻿
Cory Chase
Cory Chase
1 day ago
Seems like the enginerds forgot to "back it off a half turn"﻿
244
Stephen Gloor
Stephen Gloor
1 day ago
Excellent analysis. The penny dropped when you said the yield curve. The contractors doing the tightening must have wondered why it was not tightening. Perhaps the engineer in charge was not contactable as they must have contacted someone about whether to keep adding tension.﻿
161
Case Video
Case Video
1 day ago (edited)
Stephen Gloor ...There should have been a deputy inspector on site for a project like this. Why did the deputy inspector not put a stop to this before the failure? The deputy inspector works for local city or county agency.﻿
8
Yeti Dan
Yeti Dan
1 day ago
Apparently, the university was doing all of the inspection with limited oversight from the DOT.﻿
4
Keith Cronk
Keith Cronk
1 day ago
HE RAN OUT OF HIS MEDS ON THAT DAY.﻿
3
Russ Lehman
Russ Lehman
1 day ago (edited)
+ Yeti Dan: In other words, the fox was guarding the henhouse.﻿
10
matthewsnook
matthewsnook
1 day ago
Also, given the short length of the cable, the room for error was smaller. T﻿
1
Aaron Moore
Aaron Moore
1 day ago
If the spmts we're gone and the span was on pylons, wouldn't the member you marked be in compression? Meaning the tension rod was doing sweet FA at the time it broke? Something else is going on I'd bet.﻿
3
Kaedos
Kaedos
1 day ago
I don't do heavy construction, but I can totally envision how this situation occurs. You get into a "I can fix this" mentality and don't realize how proper ****ed you are until it's far, far, too late.﻿
11
Cholula Hot Sauce
Cholula Hot Sauce
1 day ago
So if I'm understanding things they were literally stretching the tensioning rods and wasting the energy into stressing the steel to failure?﻿
10
Matt Quick
Matt Quick
1 day ago
Studying engineering the white collar way, been doing preliminary classes before I get in the thick of it, it takes a while to get to the part where they say, "If you are building something and then all of a sudden it feels like physics has stopped working, what is supposed to loosen, tightens, what is supposed to tighten, loosens, you have 10 minutes to figure out what has gone wrong and fix it else you are about to be one very infamous man."﻿
26
Sarah Wilson
Sarah Wilson
1 day ago
Evidence the Boeing 737 rudder issue.﻿
2
Sacrificial Rook
Sacrificial Rook
19 hours ago
Aaron Moore Not quite. The rods wouldn't be slack. Remember, every other tension rod in the span is under tension too. If one support loses tension, it can no longer counterbalance the rest of the tensioning forces. What would have been the stronger compression strength of the concrete become tension stress the material can't sustain. At that point the whole structure "springs back" like cutting a stretched elastic band.﻿
1
Aaron Moore
Aaron Moore
14 hours ago
Ah, excellent point. I wasn't thinking of the bridge as a unit, forest for the trees and all that. Thanks!﻿
Cameron Hagan
Cameron Hagan
14 hours ago
Cholula Hot Sauce from what is discussed, yes. The rods were stressed beyond its elastic zone, on its stress-strain curve, and straigt into plastic deformation. If someone would have caught it then and there when they started to add more tension, there would have beed repair work since it has permanently deformed. However that did not happen and like the vid showed on the oscilloscope stress was added untill the rod surpassed its ultimate tensile strenght and went to fracture.﻿
1
JetMechMA
JetMechMA
13 hours ago
Sarah what about the Boeing 737 rudder issue? Just wondering what your thoughts are on it?...because it is also a fascinating discussion.﻿
1
0xsergy
0xsergy
10 hours ago (edited)
Or maybe it was poorly engineered and didn't hit the required torque specs. I work on aviation parts and many a time have had things fail when they should have held a torque. Who knows, maybe NDT dropped the bomb or the guy who torqued the bridge when they went to move it into place overtorqued it.﻿
SniffyPoo
SniffyPoo
8 hours ago
"it's not tightening? well keep cranking up the tension until it does. dont worry about the traffic underneath!"﻿
2
Ranjit
Ranjit
11 hours ago
Feel sorry for your wife ave, an inch of wood, not a very big stroke but the torque is amazing I bet.......﻿
45
Mike Czeczot
Mike Czeczot
1 day ago
What went wrong, this is a suspension bridge, they set it up , let people walk on it, cars drive under it. There was no suspension cables, simple﻿
10
Jon Fargo
Jon Fargo
13 hours ago
on your first video my thought was some thing had to go wrong with tension cables and or the PT rods.

I've worked in rail road construction for a few years in project oversight for most of the big class five railroads. when it comes to bridge building with the rail road it unreal the design loads they use "E-80" I've seen a handful of bridges they have used Pretension deck panels. the amount of testing data that is needed and paper work that go with each panel. theirs no way the railroad would even consider letting a contractor build pretensioned concrete onsite to many variables.﻿
32
Tommy Petraglia
Tommy Petraglia
5 hours ago (edited)
Jon Fargo
Ya, cut too many corners... Imagine the headache trying to maintain consistency in quality control with concrete batched off site over a period of so many months. How many different shipments of cement to local suppliers did this build span... and aggregate too?

One time lapse pic of the fabrication showed 4 trucks stacked waiting to unload and another the structure is under clear sheeting in what looks like very rainy weather

This is not like pouring slabs on steel decking or below grade foundation walls.

This structure needed unity in it's integrity﻿
1
D rB
D rB
5 hours ago
Did you watch the video? He's asserting, with reason, that the failure was the post-tensioned cable. The concrete didn't fail.﻿
Jon Fargo
Jon Fargo
3 hours ago
Tommy Petraglia
I would agree this not some basement foundation.
in the railroad if the batch is an hour old the truck is rejected. in ACI they want you to check the batch in the middle of the truck if it was over 90 degree we rejected the truck. the contractor always want use to check the batch before they poured just in case it didn't paas. the railroad has some hard rules but they can't afford a bad batch of concrete.﻿
tonymak88
tonymak88
11 hours ago
Yes, I like your analysis and foul language. When the temporary supports were put underneath the intersection of the second diagonal (from the left) and the bottom bridge deck (ie. the bridge ends cantilevered from the temporary supports), the second diagonal was put into compression. The post-tensioning rods would have been found loosen. If the rods were tightened up at that time, later when the temporary supports of the second diagonals were removed, the second diagonal became in tension. It was possible that the post-tensioning rods were overstressed by having been tightened twice. The engineer might have realised it too late and started to de-stress the rods in the second diagonal. The tension released from one rod was taken up by the remaining rods, which led to even more over stressing of the remaining, then the rods broke progressively. As the second diagonal failed in tension, the truss action was gone, bridge failed by shear at the end﻿
26
Marcel LeMay
Marcel LeMay
1 day ago
It's a horrible bridge design. The structure of this thing should have been a 100 percent steel truss. None of this concrete in tension BS. The only reason why they use concrete in these designs is for cost cutting reasons. But in the end, concrete complicates what could be a very simple job if it had been done with steel.﻿
149
Gordon Richardson
Gordon Richardson
1 day ago
Corrosion and maintenance are always issues with steel trusses...﻿
24
oogrooq
oogrooq
1 day ago
You obviously don't know jack squat about bridges. Prestressed concrete has been the standard for 60 years.﻿
30
jack Amok
jack Amok
1 day ago
Not for a bridge that only lasts 5 days they aren't.﻿
18
Brian Knechtel
Brian Knechtel
1 day ago (edited)
Oogrooq- Yes, stressed concrete is used in many bridges, but it's hardly the standard. Steel is still also heavily used worldwide for these applications. The problem with this bridge design is that it would have collapsed very soon, no matter what. Even if it didn't collapse at this stage, it certainly would have when people started using it, adding many additional types of loads; static, dynamic, torsion, harmonic, etc. The key is that all aspects of the design used stressed concrete & that can't work in this application no matter what, as there will always be both compression (good) forces and tension (bad) forces happening at the same time, in different parts of the bridge, as well as other types loads, as noted above. There needed to be significant structural steel used in significant parts of this truss design in order for it to work with stressed concrete. There also wasn't any redundancy built into the design - a major ****up.
Also, given that they allowed vehicle traffic to flow while doing this part of the install was a major additional ****up.
The lawsuits are really going to be flying here, and many parties will be very liable.
I feel really bad for the victims here.﻿

Be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled…Let no man deceive you by any means…..

they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved….for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie….

Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

Typically these disasters are caused by multiple factors all influencing the final catastrophic outcome. Design, materials, construction, labor, etc.

One Big Red Flag is a project that is beset by cost overruns and by schedule delays.

Unsurprisingly, the FIU project had significant cost and schedule issues which can permeate the entire project and result in significant safety concerns.

Fair Use Cited
-----------------Florida Bridge Documents Show Changes in Cost, Design and Schedule

By JASON DEAREN and JENNIFER KAY | March 23, 2018

Construction of the pedestrian bridge that collapsed and killed six people in the Miami area was behind schedule and millions over budget, in part because of a key change in the design and placement of one of its support towers.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press through a public-records request show that the Florida Department of Transportation in October 2016 advised Florida International University and its contractors to move one of the bridge’s main support structures 11 feet (3 meters) north to the edge of a canal, widening the gap between the crossing’s end supports and requiring some new structural design.

The span’s signature, 109-foot-tall (33-meter-tall) pylon was to be built atop a base at the span’s northern end. It was designed for basic support and to contribute to the aesthetics of the bridge, which was touted as an architectural marvel that would connect the rapidly growing university to the nearby community of Sweetwater. In their winning 2015 proposal, designers said the bridge provided “spectacular views” for both pedestrians using the bridge and drivers passing beneath it. They added that the tower could serve as a safety feature because it would have an “eagle-eyed location” for additional lighting and security cameras.

Videos of Thursday’s collapse show that the concrete, prefabricated segment of the bridge started crumbling on the same end of the span where the tower redesign occurred, two days after an engineer on the project reported cracks in the same location. The segment that failed had been placed atop the pylon’s footing, and the taller tower section was to be installed later.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has ordered her department’s inspector general to conduct an audit of the bridge, according to a news release Tuesday from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The agency awarded millions of dollars to the project.

It is still unclear if the design change contributed to the failure. But emails between the school, contractors, Sweetwater city officials and permitting agencies show a project that was behind schedule, which had officials worried that further delays could jeopardize the federal funding.

When the bridge collapsed, the project was already running about $2.6 million over its $9.4 million initial budget, cost-tracking documents from February show. Originally scheduled to be completed in July, the finish date had been pushed back to January 2019.

Difficulties began in late 2016, when the Florida Department of Transportation emailed project officials saying they wanted more room to allow for future widening of the U.S. highway under the bridge, according to the documents. The new position of the tower would be on the north side between the road and the canal.

“This … places the current location of the pylon in conflict with the extra travel lane and would require bridge design modifications,” Alfred Reyna, a transportation department employee working on the bridge project, wrote in an email.

After weeks of back and forth, it was decided to move the pylon 11 feet to the north, sitting near the edge of the canal. According to documents, initial costs for the new design were $204,540, with another $402,723 for construction changes. The final cost was not divulged.

“The city attorney is advising us not to speak about anything to do with the bridge,” said Sandra Antonio, a spokeswoman for the city of Sweetwater, which was working with FIU. The tower was to be located on the Sweetwater side.

Don Silver, a spokesman for Munilla Construction Management, or MCM, the Miami-based construction management firm that won the bridge contract, said the National Transportation Safety Board forbade engineers or contractors from talking about the project pending its investigation. MCM collaborated with Tallahassee-based FIGG Bridge Design on the bridge project, which also declined comment.

A spokeswoman for FIU, Maydel Santana, declined comment on the pylon redesign, but did confirm Tuesday that the bridge was expected to be completed early in 2019 and the grant ran out on Sept. 30, 2019. She also said the school was cooperating with the NTSB’s investigation.

While the NTSB probe has just begun, multiple engineers who reviewed the documents obtained by the AP said moving the tower after the bridge’s initial design invited errors.

Henry Petroski, a Duke University civil engineering professor, said even seemingly minor changes in a bridge’s design can lead to failures.

“Once a design is completed, subsequent modifications tend to be suggested and approved without the full care that went into the original design. This has happened time and again in bridges and other engineering structures,” he said.

The documents show that further time pressures were put on the tower redesign due to a bottleneck at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps was in charge of permitting certain aspects of the new tower’s footing and other elements but had stopped due to federal budget cuts. Documents show the contractors wouldn’t begin work until the Corp’s permits were finished, and FIU worried delays could jeopardize federal funding.

Kenneth Jessell, FIU’s senior vice president for financial affairs, in 2017 worried the delays would jeopardize federal TIGER funds for the university’s massive transportation redesign, of which the bridge was a key part.

In the news release announcing the audit, Transportation Secretary Chao said she wants to know whether the parties involved in the design, construction and testing of the bridge complied with standards required of projects that receive federal funding.

Bridge engineers who reviewed photographs of the collapse said it was ill-advised to move the pylon after completing the initial design, but that more analysis was warranted before it could be known whether this played a role in the collapse.

Robert Bea, a University of California, Berkeley engineering professor, said the tower base may have been more flexible after it was moved closer to the canal. This could have created more stress on the section that collapsed when crews removed temporary supports so traffic could resume, he said.

“At this time, I do not think the movement of the footing for the pylon to the north was a primary factor in the failure. However, the movement of the footing led to the requirement for one of the temporary steel supports to be relocated to be able to travel on the highway,” he said.

The wonder of our time isn’t how angry we are at politics and politicians; it’s how little we’ve done about it. - Fran Porretto
-http://bastionofliberty.blogspot.com/2016/10/a-wholly-rational-hatred.html

The section of the bridge that collapsed weighed 950 short tons . .. .

950 tons is just plain ludicrously heavy for a -pedestrian- bridge.

The $14.2 million project was funded with a $19.4 million Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant from the United States Department of Transportation in 2013

That is -ludicrously- expensive for a footbridge.

The bridge was a post-tensioned concrete structure.[15] Concrete structures are generally 10 times heavier than equivalent steel designs.[

C'mon!

Concrete truss bridges are rarely constructed, and rarely exist. [21]The vertical web of the beam was a series of triangulated concrete diagonal struts along the centerline. The diagonal angles of the struts varied across the bridge so they would align with the eventual cable-stayed appearance - a feature unique to this truss bridge

Concrete is a -lousy- choice for a truss beam. That is why most true truss beam designs are either metal or wood. and those two materials work just fine. Also consider that all large structures will flex due to changing bearing loads, wind forces and thermal expansion. Metal and wood can be flexed repeatedly and predictably, concrete will -break- when it is flexed. Concrete can -not- be made to flex, it will crack and then collapse once it does start flexing

At 9 a.m. on March 15, a university employee heard a loud "whip cracking" sound while under the bridge span, waiting for a red traffic light

How normal is that?

The bottom joint of diagonal member #11 (which contains the anchor nut for the post-tensioning rod) apparently failed explosively, during the post-tensioning operation, causing the bridge to collapse.[35] A driver who survived the collapse reported small rocks fell onto her car just before the car got smashed.

Post-collapse photos of the bridge show a post-tensioning rod jutting out about six feet from the destroyed blister, with a blue-colored hydraulic jack still attached

My conclusions,

- This bridge was an ill conceived, over budget, behind schedule boondoggle only possible because of Federal funds supplied by Uncle Sugar. The bridge was destined to fail due to a number of factors.

- The 950 tons of concrete did essentially nothing to contribute to the strength or integrity of the bridge. Each and every one of those 950 tons of concrete were a significantly demonstrable liability.

- Only a series of threaded metal rods and nuts were providing the real strength to that bridge.

- There was no redundancy in the bridge design. Apparently aesthetics were the primary consideration resulting in a very radical design that departed from long established structural design conventions.

- The bridge had such a marginal safety factor that simply moving the bridge into position could have induced unanticipated stresses into the bridge. Any unplanned for flexing would have damaged the concrete of the bridge and overstressed the metal rods holding the bridge in compression.

- The metal "tendons" holding the bridge together were likely hopelessly under engineered. Scheduled pre-tensioning of the metal tendons was not providing the desired result. This required further tensioning of the metal tendons resulting in an explosive fatigue failure of one the tendons. They kept tightening the metal tendon and nothing was happening. The metal tendon had been already stretched beyond it's fatigue strength. Continued tightening only resulted in the tendon or it's anchor to break.

- The loss of just one metal tendon should not have induced the bridge to catastrophically collapse -if- enough redundancy had been originally been designed into the bridge.

Ultimately that bridge was going to come down. Sooner or later because it was doomed from the very start.

Words to your mommy . . . .

"The most intriguing point for the historian is that where history and legend meet."

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who think they are free."

MIAMI (March 21, 2018) — NTSB investigators remain at the scene of Thursday’s pedestrian bridge collapse on the FIU campus, focusing on measuring and documenting the critical structures at the north end of the bridge.

Significant developments in the investigation include:

•Investigators secured a contract Tuesday to have a company remove components from the bridge that we believe warrant additional examination and testing. These components include sections of the floor, the canopy, a vertical member and a diagonal member; all from the north end of the structure. These components were in the area of where the failure occurred. In addition to these components, we obtained additional core samples from this area to supplement the core samples we obtained earlier.

•Shipping the core samples along with some recovered rebar and tensioning rods to the Turner Fairbank Highway Research Center, in McLean, Virginia, for testing and evaluation.

•The investigative team has obtained an exemplar tensioning rod and hydraulic unit used by the construction crew to make tension adjustments to the tensioning rods. These items are also being shipped to the Turner Fairbank Highway Research Center for evaluation and testing.

•The larger bridge components the investigative team is removing, are being stored at a secured Florida Department of Transportation facility, under the control of the NTSB. The additional examinations and forensic deconstruction of these components will occur there.

•The investigative team has confirmed that workers were adjusting tension on the two tensioning rods located in the diagonal member at the north end of the span when the bridge collapsed. They had done this same work earlier at the south end, moved to the north side, and had adjusted one rod. They were working on the second rod when the span failed and collapsed. The roadway was not closed while this work was being performed.

•Removal of the post-tensioning device to a temporary storage area and preparing it for shipment.

•Preliminary comparison of bridge schematics to measurements obtained during the investigators’ examination of the collapsed structure.

•Interviews with first responders

While segments of the bridge are being transported to and stored at an FDOT facility, there are no plans to reconstruct the bridge as part of the NTSB investigation into why the bridge collapsed. The nature of the structure and the way it failed make reconstruction impractical.

The next update on the progress of this investigation will likely be the preliminary report. Preliminary reports are generally completed within a few weeks following completion of field work. Preliminary reports do not contain analysis and do not address probable cause.

The design of the Florida International University (FIU) bridge which collapsed onto a live highway killing six people, could be seen in hindsight as a potential “recipe for disaster” according to one bridge expert.

Speaking during a panel discussion on the collapse at the NCE100 breakfast club in London, Mott MacDonald senior project manager metros and civil Andrew Bance said the over complicated nature of the design could have been a factor in the collapse.

“It was a very unique structure which could be viewed as a bit of a fake,” he commented in relation to his review of the information available following the collapse. “It was meant to look like a cable stayed structure, but it isn’t and if you were to design a truss by itself then you wouldn’t arrange it like that. Then you’ve potentially got a new concrete and an accelerated programme, it’s a recipe for disaster.”

There is currently an investigation into the collapse by US construction firm MCM, which was constructing the bridge. Miami-Dade Police and the National Transportation Safety Board are conducting separate investigations. Figg Bridge Group designed the bridge and the panel at the NCE 100 event said that the engineering firm was well known in the bridge design community and had respected expertise.

Bance’s comment came in response to news that, although the bridge appeared to be a cable stayed design, the cables did not support its structure. Tender documents which came to light last week said the cables were in fact hollow tubes designed for architectural effect and to meet the natural frequency requirements of the bridge.

Tony Gee & Partners group director Akram Malik said the addition of non-structural “cables” was an “odd decision”.

“It’s not by any means a unique decision, I’ve seen it quite a few times where you add something that is purely aesthetic and just makes life more difficult, rather than actually adding to the structure.”

Malik added that in general when clients want a “statement structure” designers might twist the concept to fit the client’s brief.

“The client is there for something but then the engineer should be there to put the right elements in,” said Malik.

The FIU bridge collapsed onto traffic, killing six people on 15 March during work to post-tension bars in a diagonal member in the bridge’s concrete truss .

Engineers have suggested the point of collapse was an explosive failure of the concrete in the joint at the north side of the bridge which occurred during the post tensioning works.

Independent bridge consultant Simon Bourne said this type of failure could be caused by poor concrete compaction due to too much reinforcement in the joint.

“What you need in that node is good quality concrete and to detail it well with just the reinforcement that you barely need,” he said. “Additional reinforcement can just cause problems later on with compaction.”

Temporary Works Forum chair Tim Lohmann said that often an issue was that each designer would add in their own reinforcement, making joints heavily congested.
“Frequently you get multiple designers involved in connections and everyone wants to put their little bit in to be sure and you end up with too much,” said Lohmann.

Malik agreed, adding: “That’s one thing is often missing across the board, we just accept bursting steel [added in for each pre-stressing bar] from sub-contractors, but there’s no overview to rationalise that reinforcement to only make sure you’ve got what you need.”

Lohmann went on to stress the importance of an independent check on the design and said it was unclear from the available documents how the bridge design was to be checked.

“Who were the checking authorities?” Lohmann asked. “The checking period was four weeks, and for a structure of this unusual nature, that doesn’t sound like a very long time to me.

“[In the documents] It said it was one round of checks and it’s not clear what the independence of that check was because it was being managed by the bridge designer.”

Figg has been contacted for a response to the points raised at the New Civil Engineer event. In general statements it has said it is working with authorities on their investigations. “This is an unprecedented event – no other bridge designed by Figg Bridge Engineers has ever experienced such a collapse. Figg-designed bridges have proven to be incredibly durable. For example, we have worked on more than 230 bridges throughout the United States and have designed nearly 56km of bridges in the southeastern Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico that have withstood multiple hurricanes,” it said.

MCM said in a general statement: “We will conduct a full investigation to determine exactly what went wrong and will cooperate with investigators on scene in every way.”

Thank you for the updates, Red Baron. Things like this drop off the media circus within a few days and seems we hear no more about it.

"You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." — VADM James Stockdale, USN (1923-2005)

No one seemed to notice when a large white crane that had been working at the doomed Florida International University bridge lurched away down Tamiami Trail shortly after the span collapsed. There was a disaster to respond to: Mountains of concrete. Horribly mangled cars. Dead and injured people.

It wasn't until some time later that authorities began wondering what happened to the crane and its operator, a close eyewitness who might help the investigation into the collapse. But he, and the crane, were gone.

"He drove away in the crane and nobody stopped him," said Carl Robertson, 73, a homeless man who lives near the site of the bridge. Robertson was right there and saw it fall down. He was the first person to call 911, using his aging cell phone.

Photos and video taken immediately after the March 15 accident show the crane — rented from a Sweetwater firm called George's Crane — still present on the downed bridge’s northwest side. When a Miami Herald photographer took a wide-frame aerial shot of the disaster about an hour later, the crane was nowhere in sight.

As the public tries to piece together what happened that chaotic day — at a time when government entities investigating the collapse have squeezed shut the flow of crucial information — the crane has become a source of speculation for amateur sleuths and online theorists. Readers asked the Herald: What was the crane doing and where did it go? In the absence of official explanations, some even wondered if the crane itself could have bumped the 950-ton bridge and caused the catastrophe. Did the operator then flee the scene in the most ungainly of getaway vehicles?

Here is what is known: Police don't seem to believe the crane man fled the scene or caused the collapse, which independent engineers suspect was the result of structural and design flaws. They say the unidentified operator drove the crane a short distance away and stuck around to offer help — but for how long isn't clear.

The crane — with the name "George's" emblazoned prominently on the boom — had been used to lift a piece of equipment for adjusting the span's internal steel supports around the time the bridge came crashing down at 1:47 p.m., killing six people.

Robertson was a short distance west at his encampment.

Within minutes of the bridge coming down, Robertson said, the crane's operator jumped out of the cab to untie a strand of caution tape that police coming from nearby FIU and Sweetwater had quickly anchored on the machine as they rushed to save lives. Then he started up his rig and rumbled west down Tamiami and out of sight.

"I didn't think about it until later that day," Robertson said of the crane's disappearance. "I didn't have my wits about me because they were pulling people out."

Although he was the first person to call 911, police recordings show, he says the cops never followed up to take a formal interview.

After the Herald published a piece last week on FIU engineers discovering potentially problematic cracks in the bridge days before the collapse, Robertson called reporters to recount his story — and to ask if anyone had figured out where the crane and the crane man went.

A lawyer for George's Crane — which rents hydraulic cranes as large as 170 tons — offered an explanation to the Herald.

Far from fleeing, the operator needed to move the lumbering contraption out of the way, said the attorney, Bryant Blevins. Rescuers had shown up right away.

"The emergency vehicles needed access," Blevins said. "They were getting there pretty quickly after the collapse. At that point, he had to move the crane."

So, Blevins said, the crane man drove the boom mounted on a six-wheel trailer out of the way and then — what time exactly Blevins couldn't say — took it about 30 blocks north to the George's Crane lot in Sweetwater. That's where the crane stayed.

The operator, however, returned to the scene "later that night" and was interviewed by police and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal agency that investigates on-the-job accidents, according to Blevins.

A spokesman for OSHA declined to comment. The public knows very little about why the bridge came down. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the cause of the accident, has forbidden the release of potentially critical public records that might shed some light. The Herald is suing the Florida Department of Transportation to compel their release.

George Bremer, who owns the crane company, could not be reached.

Whatever happened, the operator's behavior is puzzling — and angers some attorneys who are involved in the case and learned of the crane's disappearance independently of the Herald.

"Why would he leave the scene?" asked Alan Goldfarb, who is representing the family of Alexa Duran, an FIU student crushed to death in her vehicle during the collapse. "It doesn't make any sense. ... How could you remove equipment from an investigative scene?"

The Miami-Dade Police Department, which is investigating the deaths as homicides, has its own version of where the crane and the crane man went.

A key concrete support truss in the doomed Florida International University pedestrian bridge developed worrisome cracks 10 days before the structure was lifted into place over the Tamiami Trail, photographs and an internal email unintentionally released by the school show.

The documents, released in response to public records requests from the Miami Herald, show that FIU's construction and engineering team discovered potentially problematic cracks in the bridge earlier than officials have previously acknowledged.

The cracks were found in late February at the base of a diagonal support member at the north end of the span. Independent engineers have identified that as the point where the structure shattered on March 15 while under construction, sending the 950-ton bridge crashing onto the roadway below and claiming six lives.

Three independent engineers who examined the photos, records and bridge blueprints at the Herald's request concurred the cracks were a red flag signaling potentially critical structural problems. Outside experts have zeroed in on that truss member, identified in plans as No. 11, as being "under-designed" — that is, not strong enough to withstand the pressure from the weight of the bridge it was supposed to hold up.

The location and diagonal shape of the cracks shown in the FIU team's photos support that theory, the engineers said. They said the cracks should have prompted work on the bridge to stop for an in-depth review that likely would have resulted in the truss connection being re-engineered and significantly reinforced.

"Knowing the stresses that member was under and what happened, that crack was something that in hindsight should have been investigated," said David Beck, a New Hampshire engineer who helped uncover mistakes in Boston's $10.8 billion Big Dig project.

Linwood Howell, a senior engineer at a Texas firm that specializes in bridge design and inspection, said the cracks were signs of the structure's "imminent failure."

"There's nothing they could have done short of starting over and redesigning the structure," said Howell, whose firm conducts bridge inspections for the state of Texas.

A third engineer consulted by the Herald concurred with the first two but asked not to be named.

A fourth bridge engineer, Ralph Verrastro of Naples, said the cracks did not appear significant to him.

"The photos don't clearly provide any clues to me related to ultimate failure," Verrastro said in an email. "I would assume these cracks would have been repaired by epoxy injection before the bridge was moved."

Because FIU and state transportation officials continue to withhold other critical records under instructions from the National Transportation Safety Board, it's hard to say what the FIU team's response to the cracks was.

In a Feb. 28 memo, Jose Morales, a consulting engineer for FIU, notes one crack in particular "merits special attention." Morales urges that the bridge engineer of record be consulted "to provide a response." That engineer of record is W. Denney Pate of FIGG Bridge Group, which designed the bridge. The memo was sent to a project manager at Munilla Construction Management, the bridge project's builder, and copied to Alberto Delgado, a construction project manager at FIU, and other members of the project team.

NTSB, which is investigating the bridge collapse, has told FIU and the Florida Department of Transportation not to release records dated after Feb. 19, so there are no available public records to document any response from FIGG or other team members to Morales' memo. The Herald has sued to obtain subsequent records related to the bridge collapse. The bridge collapse is also the subject of a Miami-Dade police homicide investigation and families of some of the victims have filed lawsuits.

The Feb. 28 memo and the attached photos of cracking were released in error, an FIU attorney, Eric Isicoff, said Monday. After the Herald contacted FIU for comment on the cracks, Isicoff demanded reporters delete any copies of the documents from their computers.

"Any hard copies that have been made also should be destroyed," Isicoff wrote.

Cracks such as the one pictured above may have been a sign of "imminent failure" of the Florida International University bridge that collapsed March 15, claiming six lives. Engineers had discovered the cracks days before the bridge was lifted into place.
Florida International University

Mark Caramanica, an attorney at Thomas & LoCicero representing the Herald in its public records requests to FIU, said the Herald has no obligation to comply.

"The Herald has a First Amendment right to publish this information, and the public has a right to know what may have led to this terrible event," he said.

The cracks documented in the Feb. 28 memo were discovered while the span was still resting on the ground, after the removal of temporary shoring that provided support while it was built by the side of the Trail.

Beck and Howell said that's potentially telling because the span at that point was resting only on a support on either end, mimicking the way it would stand once installed over the roadway. The cracks thus could have been a sign of shearing pressure — a sideways stress — that the No. 11 truss could not handle once under the full load it was meant to carry.

Both Beck and Howell, echoing other outside engineers who have analyzed publicly available blueprints, records, photos and videos, believe the connection between the No. 11 truss and the bridge deck — the place where the cracking occurred — was poorly designed, lacking sufficient steel and concrete to bear the enormous load placed on it. All the engineers emphasize that a clear-cut cause for the collapse may not be established until the NTSB publishes its conclusions, and that their analysis could change based on new information.

Ten days after the Feb. 28 memo, the bridge's main span, fabricated by the side of the road, was lifted into place by two special transporters. That means FIU's engineers and contractors had either done something to address the cracks or concluded they were not an issue, the outside engineers said.

Concrete cracking in construction is common, and records show FIU bridge team members were expecting some cracking as they prepared the bridge span and moved it into place.

In fact, some minor cracking was discovered even earlier, other released records show, but dismissed as inconsequential — a conclusion the independent engineers agree with.

But three days after the bridge was lifted into place, Pate called an FDOT official to report that cracking had been found at the north end of the bridge, records released by the agency immediately after the collapse show. In a recorded phone message, Pate said the cracks did not represent a safety hazard but should be repaired. It's quite possible that the cracks Pate reported were the same ones in the photos and memo from Feb. 28, Howell said.

The cracks might have become worse after the bridge was moved and set in place, resting atop a pylon at either end. That would especially be the case if the No. 11 truss, the last diagonal piece at the north end, was beginning to fail under the full load of the bridge, he said.

The cracks were discussed at a meeting of project team members the morning of the collapse, though no safety concerns were raised, FDOT said. The bridge collapsed while crews were atop the walkway's canopy, adjusting the tension on steel support rods inside the No. 11 truss member as traffic continued to flow on the open road below.

Whether the crews were tightening or loosening the rods has not been disclosed, but could be critical in explaining the cause of the collapse. Because the truss-type design of the bridge means there is no redundant support, the failure of a single structural piece can bring the entire overpass down under its own weight, experts say.

One early report, by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, had the crews tightening the rods in an effort to close the cracks, leading to speculation that over-tightening could have caused the truss to shatter.

But other experts, citing released bridge plans, say they were more likely loosening the rods. The rods were apparently a modification to the plans, added to the bridge design after FDOT asked FIU to move the entire bridge 11 feet north to accommodate a future lane for transit.

The move forced a change in the carefully calibrated plan for moving the bridge into place. It put the north end of the main span well off the edge of the roadway on a canal bank. Because a transport machine could not traverse that roadway edge, the point where it would lift the structure was moved toward the center of the bridge. That means the end would sag when lifted. To prevent that, the rods were added to provide extra compressive support.

The rods were tightened before the bridge was lifted off the ground. The plans called for them to be loosened after the bridge was in place because that extra compression was no longer needed. That's the operation some experts believe was underway when the bridge plummeted to the ground.

The cracks in the Feb. 28 document were discovered after the rods were tightened, or stressed, in preparation for the lift. In the accompanying memo, Morales, an engineer with FIU consultant Bolton Perez & Associates, asked MCM and Pate to "determine if these were expected during the bridge stressing," and singled out one crack that "due to the size" needed "special attention."

Citing the cracks and his own calculations showing that the No. 11 truss was crushingly overstressed, Howell speculated that either operation — tightening or loosening — could have been enough to shatter the connection.

"Since it was right on the brink of failure, anytime you disturb it — boom — it goes," Howell said. "It just needed a little push to go over the edge."

A sufficiently attentive engineer, knowing what kind of load the No. 11 member was supposed to carry, should have exercised great caution and ordered a thorough review, preferably by an independent engineer not involved in the project to ensure objectivity, Howell said.

Given the bridge was moved into place soon after and subsequently fell, he assumes that did not happen.

"The cracks are telling them that the connection is failing, but they’re not seeing it," Howell said. "When it’s your design, you rationalize your way around it. "

Still is a new one for me. Leaving the scene of an Accident in a 170 ton crane. You have to be pretty sneaky to pull that one off. If you have ever been around heavy equipment you realize how slow they actually move.

Not buying it.

"They wanted to be left alone to face challenges head-on, and to prosper from their own hard work and ingenuity...harsh country tends to produce strong people."-John Erickson

Didja notice in the dash cam video that if it had collapsed a few more SECONDS later, an approaching SCHOOL BUS could have been under it?

There are no “secular” places, discussions, or anything else where God’s word does not have authority and the right to be heard. To claim there are is akin to a 3 year old saying “shut up and get out of here, this is none of your business” to their mother or father .

To some here on TB, it was beamed up to the Reptillian mothership. Off the flat Earth.

Cloaked by chemtrails.

"...Cry 'Havoc' and let slip the cats of war..."
Razor sharpening while you wait - Occam
If it works, it doesn't have enough features. - Windows 10 design philosophy.
Forget the beer, I'm just here for the doom!
Humans, just a tool for amino acids to make Swiss watches.

Not to mention, with random poisonous herbs and colloidal silver (seemingly typically dispensed next to a tattoo parlor/palm reader place by someone who has not ONE legitimate STEM degree) for medical care, instead of medical doctors, nurses, hospitals, modern testing laboratories, sophisticated diagnostic testing equipment, and antibiotics.

Notable to me that many of the cracks went all the way around some of the beams.

Other cracks were near corners thus creating a potential "hinge".

Apparently these were not superficial surface cracks.
----------
FIU Bridge Collapse CRACKS REVEALED
The cracks were present BEFORE the bridge was moved to it's last location!
This was NOT explained to the public by ANY of the knowing parties!
NOW they have the FOX GUARDING THE HEN HOUSE.

"Knowing the stresses that member was under and what happened, that crack was something that in hindsight should have been investigated," said David Beck, a New Hampshire engineer who helped uncover mistakes in Boston's $10.8 billion Big Dig project.

Linwood Howell, a senior engineer at a Texas firm that specializes in bridge design and inspection, said the cracks were signs of the structure's "imminent failure."

"There's nothing they could have done short of starting over and redesigning the structure," said Howell, whose firm conducts bridge inspections for the state of Texas.

A third engineer consulted by the Herald concurred with the first two but asked not to be named.

A fourth bridge engineer, Ralph Verrastro of Naples, said the cracks did not appear significant to him.

The two engineers with anglo names openly said the engineering was faulty.

One engineer who didn't want his name reported agreed.

Only the engineer with a HISPANIC name said it was no big deal.

Gotta support "your own", you know?

Be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled…Let no man deceive you by any means…..

they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved….for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie….

Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

Cracks that appeared in the Florida International University bridge days before it collapsed were far more extensive than previously disclosed, according to photographs included in a preliminary report issued Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The photos show four alarming-looking cracks — one at least 3 1/2 inches deep into the bridge’s deck — developing in precisely the section of the span that is believed to have failed on March 15, killing five motorists and one worker.

Given the size of the cracks, the photos raise new questions about why officials at FIU, the Florida Department of Transportation and the private contractors running the project did not seek to shut down the busy road underneath the bridge.

The cracking appears far wider and more severe than smaller cracks that appeared in the bridge before it was lifted into place above Tamiami Trail on March 10, according to Linwood Howell, a Texas-based bridge engineer not affiliated with the project who has studied its plans and construction since the collapse.

“Those first cracks were disturbing enough,” Howell said. “These are much more major. I’m shocked looking at this stuff. ... The bridge is clearly failing.”

While it drew no conclusions as to the cause of the collapse, the six-page report from the NTSB, a federal agency investigating the tragedy, did not find problems in the concrete and steel bars used in the bridge. That would seem to lessen the possibility of construction errors causing the disaster, and suggest a design mistake may have occurred, as the Miami Herald reported earlier this summer. The $14.3 million bridge was meant to serve as a testament to FIU’s ambitious plans for growth and a way to connect it to the neighboring city of Sweetwater, where many students live. But experts told the Herald an unusual design — focused on soaring aesthetics — may have led to a fatal error in its structural calculations, leading to the collapse.

The families of several victims have already filed lawsuits against FIU and the bridge’s design and construction team.

A view of the FIU bridge, looking down from the deck, adjacent to support number 12, shows what appears to be a significant crack. The time stamp on the photo is March 14, 2018, one day before the bridge collapsed, killing six.Bolton, Perez & Associates Consulting Engineers

Although the bridge’s designers, FIGG Bridge Group, were aware of the cracks, they did not consider them a safety threat, according to a voice message one of FIGG’s engineers left with FDOT on March 13, two days before the collapse.

“Obviously some repairs or whatever will have to be done, but from a safety perspective we don’t see that there’s any issue there so we’re not concerned about it from that perspective,” the engineer, W. Denney Pate, said, “although obviously the cracking is not good and something’s going to have to be, ya know, done to repair that.”

The photographs released Thursday were taken on the same day as Pate’s message or a day later.

On the morning the bridge collapsed, FIGG and the bridge’s construction firm, Munilla Construction Management, met with FIU and FDOT officials for two hours to discuss the cracking, according to FIU. The road wasn’t closed. Workers then began re-tensioning the bridge — a process that involves tightening internal supports rods. Although it is unclear what they were hoping to accomplish, experts say they may have been trying to close up the cracks. The bridge came down while they were working.

“If they would have done their due diligence in closing that road, this could have been avoided,” said Orlando Duran, the father of FIU student Alexa Duran, who was killed in the collapse. “At that point, so what if the bridge collapses? There would have been nobody under it — like my daughter and many others. And sure it would have had to be rebuilt, but who cares? That would have been a good thing.”

FDOT has said it was not told about “life-safety issues” and did not hear Pate’s message until days later. As Gov. Rick Scott runs for U.S. Senate, FDOT has consistently distanced itself from the failed project, although it in fact played a key role.

Ed Seifert, a spokesman for FDOT, said Thursday that department employees did not see photos of the cracks “until after the collapse” and that the FDOT consultant who attended the meeting was an administrator, not an engineer.

Under Florida’s public records law, the Miami Herald has requested minutes and other public records from that meeting, but FDOT denied the request. The Herald is now suing FDOT to compel the release of the documents. The NTSB has said it opposes the documents becoming public before its final report is published and has instructed FDOT not to grant the Herald’s request.

Independent experts consulted by the Herald said the bridge had a key design mistake that left a crucial support structure on its north side under-designed. Worrisome cracks were found in that area 10 days before the bridge was lifted into place. That should have alerted designers that the bridge was in trouble and that the work should be stopped and reviewed, the experts said.

The new cracks developed in the same place, a critical diagonal truss strut known as No. 11.

“The cracks show that the bridge could fail at any minute,” said Howell, the bridge engineering expert. “They should have immediately shored it up. For a structural engineer to look at this and say it is not a safety hazard, that’s insane.”

Alan Goldfarb, a lawyer representing the Duran family, said the photos were more evidence of negligence by FIU and its contractors.

“Everybody that was working on and around these areas could not have missed these cracks,” Goldfarb said. “They had a duty to stop this project and certainly never allow traffic to flow underneath the bridge in this condition.”

In an emailed statement, a spokeswoman for FIU wrote: “We are cooperating and assisting authorities fully in an effort to understand what happened.”

A spokesman for FIGG declined to comment. The NTSB has asked the parties responsible for building the bridge not to talk in detail about the collapse.

New report

The NTSB report says testing of bridge pieces, including concrete and steel support bars, so far has uncovered no “notable materials issues.”

The update also suggests that steel structural supports in a critical concrete brace where experts believe the bridge came apart were installed as designed. NTSB investigators have completed most interviews of engineers, contractors and FDOT officials. The agency expects to complete interviews “in early August,” but does not specify when a final report would be issued. Experts say such investigations can take a year or more.

This is the second NTSB update that zeroes in on the same connection of the No. 11 strut to the deck.

An earlier report included photos of mostly hairline cracks in the No. 11 strut and adjacent portions of the bridge while the 174-foot span was still on the ground by the side of the Tamiami Trail where it was fabricated.

This time, the NTSB released photos of far larger cracks on the No. 11 piece that were taken three or four days after the bridge was lifted into place. The report offers no conclusions about the cracks.

“I sure as hell await the NTSB’s conclusions,” said Stuart Grossman, a lawyer for survivor Richard Humble. “It looks like they uncovered significant materials to analyze, and it looks to me like the cracks are deadly.”

The bridge was built on the side of Tamiami Trail and then lifted into place, a process known as accelerated bridge construction, although that doesn’t seem to have played a role in the collapse.

According to the update, NTSB investigators also cut open and tested several pieces of the bridge. They concluded the concrete appeared “sound” and that steel bars inside the concrete brace seemed installed according to the bridge blueprints.

The report does not reach any further conclusions, but that might reduce the possibility of construction error as a cause of the collapse.

Investigators also tested the post-tensioning jack system that was being used on the No. 11 truss member by crews when the bridge collapsed. The report does not disclose the results of those tests.

A measuring stick shows the depth of a crack in the deck of the doomed FIU bridge. This photo was dated March 13, 2018, two days before the bridge collapsed, killing six. Munilla Construction Management Provided by National Transportation Safety Board

The Frankford Avenue Bridge, also known as the Pennypack Creek Bridge, the Pennypack Bridge, the Holmesburg Bridge, and the King's Highway Bridge, erected in 1697 in the Holmesburg section of Northeast Philadelphia, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, is the oldest surviving roadway bridge in the United States. The three-span, 73-foot-long (22 m) twin stone arch bridge carries Frankford Avenue (U.S. Route 13), just north of Solly Avenue, over Pennypack Creek in Pennypack Park.[2]

The bridge, built at the request of William Penn to connect his mansion with the new city of Philadelphia, was an important link on the King's Highway that linked Philadelphia with cities to the north (Trenton, New York, and Boston). On March 10, 1683, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed a law requiring the building of bridges across all of the rivers and creeks along all of the King's Highway in Pennsylvania, from the Falls of the Delaware (at Trenton, N.J.) to the southernmost ports of Sussex County (now part of the state of Delaware). The bridges, which were to be completed within 18 months, were to be ten feet wide and include railings along each side. The areas on either side of the bridges were to be cleared to facilitate horse and cart traffic. Each bridge was to be built by male inhabitants of the surrounding area; those who failed to appear were to be fined 20 shillings.

The bridge was mostly comprised of concrete. "Truss Beam" construction is almost never associated with concrete. Steel and wood are used in truss beam bridges.

Concrete has great compressive strength in vertical load bearing applications. Concrete has very poor resistance to tension (stretching) loads. Concrete use is very problematic in diagonal or horizontal load applications.

The concrete FIU bridge, at no time, was able to support it's own massive dead weight without the use of a complicated system of pre-tensioned steel rods/cables and channels.

Pre-tensioning cables/rods are almost always grouted within their channels once they are tensioned. This was -not- the case with the FIU bridge.

Cracks were apparent immediately after the concrete was poured and the forms removed.

Cracks increased in number and in size before, during, and after the bridge was moved.

Cracks increased in size on the -morning- of the collapse. Those photos have -not- been released.

It is not completely clear why the pre-tensioning rods were being adjusted when the bridge collapsed.

It has not been explained why the apparent failure of just -one- pre-tensioning rod would result in the total failure of the bridge. It does point to the complete lack of redundancy in the bridge design.

"The most intriguing point for the historian is that where history and legend meet."

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who think they are free."

Engineers working for Florida International University saw gaping cracks open in their brand-new bridge.

Someone thought the damage was sufficiently ominous to take a series of pictures. But no one thought to share the photos with employees at the Florida Department of Transportation, which could have ordered the road closed and traffic diverted.

When the bridge collapsed two days later, on March 15, six people died.

In the judgment of independent engineering experts, ignoring the cracks — which ran like chasms through a crucial support at the north side of the bridge — amounted to professional misconduct.

Could it also have been a crime?

The answer may lie in a meeting that occurred the morning of the catastrophic collapse.

Records and recollections from the meeting could reveal who shot the photos, who viewed them, and who — if anyone — thought they were serious enough to warrant closing the state road known as Tamiami Trail. But FDOT has refused to disclose documents from the two-hour meeting, leading the Miami Herald to sue for their release in an ongoing case.

“They were looking at major damage. You should be thinking that the bridge could come down,” David Beck, a New Hampshire-based structural engineer, told the Herald after seeing photographs of the cracks released last week by federal authorities. “At that point, you stop. You put a hold on this thing.”

Whether the cracks should have led FIU and its contractors, FIGG Bridge Group and Munilla Construction Management, to ask for the road to be closed could matter a great deal in civil court, as victims and their families sue for damages. But building a criminal case such as manslaughter is another matter entirely.

That’s because of how favorably Florida law treats contractors after construction accidents, experts say. Under state statute, prosecutors have to show that defendants acted with “reckless disregard for human life” or had “a grossly careless disregard for the safety and welfare of the public.”

It’s a high burden of proof.

“There’s a big difference between civil negligence and criminal negligence,” said Miami defense attorney Roy Black, who helped win an acquittal nearly two decades ago in one of the last major cases in Miami-Dade County where criminal charges were brought over a construction accident. “You have to be hit in the face with the problem and have ignored it.”

An example of that: If someone involved in the project saw the cracks and urged that Tamiami Trail be shut down, but was blown off so as to avoid inconveniencing commuters.

“Prosecutors will want to know if and when concerns were raised — and if they were raised with the urgency that demanded immediate action,” said Steve Solow, the former chief of environmental crimes at the U.S. Department of Justice who now heads the white-collar crime division at of the Washington-D.C. law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman.

Ed Seifert, an FDOT spokesman, said no department employees saw photos of the cracks until after the collapse. He did not respond when asked if the consultant who attended the morning meeting, Alfredo Reyna, had seen the photos, but said Reyna was not alerted to any “life-safety issues.”

For now, the Miami-Dade police homicide bureau is investigating the tragedy, while also awaiting the results of the the National Transportation Safety Board’s conclusion on what caused the crash. The NTSB is the federal agency investigating why the bridge fell down

No one associated with the project would answer the Herald’s questions in any detail, citing the NTSB probe.

Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle will ultimately decide whether to charge anyone — and she doesn’t seem likely to take risks in the courtroom, based on past statements.

The day after the tragedy, Fernández Rundle drew criticism for saying that criminal charges were “improbable.”

“The only cases, they are very challenging, they are super complex, they are very difficult to fit into a criminal container if you like,” Fernández Rundle told WFOR-CBS4 on March 16.

She soon walked back those comments, saying she was talking generally about cases involving construction accidents and that the evidence would dictate what happens with the criminal probe.

“If criminal charge are warranted, they will be filed,” she later said.

Now, some of that potential evidence is being made public.

HWY18MH009-investigative-update_Page_4_Image_0001
A measuring stick shows the depth of a crack in the deck of the doomed FIU bridge. This photo was dated March 13, 2018, two days before the bridge collapsed, killing six.
Munilla Construction Management Provided by National Transportation Safety Board
Four photos showing major cracks were released last week by the NTSB. They are time-stamped March 13 or 14, shortly before the collapse. One crack appears to be three-and-a-half inches deep. Broken shards of concrete lie nearby. Superficial cracks in concrete are common. But these hardly seem minor.

“Any normal person seeing those pictures would say: ‘How could they not close the road?’ ” said Sen. Annette Taddeo, D-Miami, who sits on the state Senate’s transportation committee. “It seems negligent, to say the least.”

The cracks were likely the result of a design flaw in the bridge and should have served as an immediate warning to FIGG and MCM, according to engineering experts consulted by the Herald.

“For a structural engineer to look at this and say it is not a safety hazard, that’s insane.”” said one expert, Linwood Howell.

After the NTSB finishes its probe, Miami-Dade’s homicide bureau and prosecutors will consult with outside experts to examine how engineers respond to cracks in bridges around the country.

“Prosecutors are going to want to talk to experts and learn the industry standards,” said Solow, the former Justice Department lawyer.

Tough cases
South Florida, with its voracious real estate market, is a hotbed of construction — and construction accidents.

Last month, a construction manager was killed during the apparently flawed demolition of a Miami Beach condo building. The Miami Beach Police Department is investigating.

Given past history, the odds of a criminal case over the FIU bridge seem slim: Miami-Dade prosecutors have declined to bring cases in other notable construction accidents, including over the four construction workers killed in a Miami Dade College parking garage collapse in 2012, a fatal crane accident near downtown Miami in 2008 and a concrete-pouring accident that left three workers dead at a Bal Harbour condo project in 2006.

auto1 scam lnew cmg
State attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle said criminal charges were “improbable” over the FIU bridge disaster. Her comments came just a day after the deadly collapse and well before investigators had a chance to gather evidence.
C.M. GUERRERO cmguerrero@miamiherald.com
When Miami prosecutors have gone after contractors, they’ve often often failed to win a conviction.

Prosecutors did bring a case against outdoor sign company Eller Media, which along with an electrician was charged with manslaughter in the electrocution of a 12-year-old boy at one of its bus shelters in 1998. The state alleged that jury-rigged electrical wiring amounted to gross negligence and led to the boy’s death.

But a jury acquitted the company and the electrician after defense attorneys, including Black, argued that a lightning strike could have killed the boy.

More recently, prosecutors charged a Miami man, Jose Navarro, with manslaughter in a backhoe accident. He was helping a friend dig a backyard pond; the state alleged Navarro fatally struck his friend with the backhoe’s bucket, not during the work — but during what was in essence impromptu horseplay.

But jurors last year decided on a lesser charge of misdemeanor culpable negligence — and Navarro got 60 days in jail.

Across the nation, there have been only a handful of criminal convictions in construction and industrial accidents.

In 2007, Massachusetts prosecutors charged a company with manslaughter for a tunnel collapse that killed a woman under an avalanche of concrete. Investigators said the company knew that the epoxy it marketed and sold for the project couldn’t handle the weight of the ceiling panels that fell. The charge was dropped when the company paid a $16 million fine.

In another high-profile case, state prosecutors in Philadelphia secured a manslaughter conviction and prison sentence for a contractor who ignored safety advice and cut costs in the the demolition of a building that toppled on an adjacent thrift store, killing six people.

Many more accidents have ended with no criminal charges. Over a decade ago, an interstate bridge in Minnesota collapsed, killing 13 people. The NTSB ruled a design flaw and poor inspections led to the accident, but no one was prosecuted.

The list of firms that could face criminal and civil liability over the FIU bridge disaster is long.

Play Video
DurationÂ 3:02FIU’s plan for bridge had key mistake, engineers say
The Florida International University bridge that collapsed outside Miami, killing six people, appears to have had a key flaw in its plans. The university's desire for a 'signature' bridge contributed to the unorthodox design.

By Jose Iglesias
The $14.3 million bridge was designed by FIGG, built by MCM and supervised by FIU officials. Two independent engineering firms were brought in to provide oversight: Bolton Perez and Associates, which inspected the bridge, and Louis Berger, which approved design plans and structural calculations.

FDOT also played an important role, although the department has repeatedly pointed out that FIU served as the project’s primary oversight agency.

Michael Hernández, a spokesman for MCM, said the Miami-based company is working with the NTSB and was restricted from commenting.

“Our prayers continue to be with the victims of this tragedy and the entire South Florida community,” he said.

Madeline Baro, a spokeswoman for FIU, declined to comment beyond providing a previously issued statement that said the university is cooperating with NTSB.

Representatives of FIGG, Bolton Perez and Louis Berger did not respond to requests for comments.

Sixteen wrongful-death and injury lawsuits have already been filed over the bridge collapse.

Other investigations are playing out, too, including one by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a federal agency that can penalize employers for worker-safety violations. The Florida Board of Professional Engineers said it could not disclose whether it was investigating the conduct of FIGG or Pate, who has been a licensed engineer in the state since 1984.

A report released by the NTSB last week did not reach a conclusion as to what caused the disaster. But it showed that investigators are beginning to rule out construction errors like a poor concrete mix or steel bars being laid improperly.

“If all the materials and dimensions are found to meet the [technical standards] and design plan requirements, the probability is high that the cause of the failure is related to design,” said Ralph Verrastro, a bridge engineer based in Naples.

The Herald reported in June that a seeming error in the bridge’s structural calculations may have doomed it to fail.

The error was identified by structural engineers consulted by the newspaper who said it would have led to the kind of cracking seen in the photos. The flaw involved a critical support at the bridge’s north end that was not designed to withstand the forces placed upon it. That support is what is believed to have failed on March 15 when workers attempted to tighten rods running through the bridge, possibly causing the span to come crashing down onto traffic.

Only seems logical that all the supporting pillars should be the first things built. That's just me.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Source – The Declaration of Independence

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